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THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 
fcfc. 



THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 

And Two Other Poems 
For Christmas 

by 
george edward woodberry 



PUBLISHED FOR THE 

WOODBERRY SOCIETY 

1912 



COPYRIGHT, I 91 2, BY GEORGE E. WOODBERRY 



-j% 33 s "* 






V 



THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON 



©CU330370 



The first of these poems was originally pub- 
lished in The Atlantic Monthly, 1911; the 
second, with a different title, ' ' Star- Song," in 
Scribner's, 1911; the third in Scribner 's, 19 12 



CONTENTS 

PREFACE 3 

THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS I 3 

WHAT THE STARS SANG IN THE DESERT 2 1 

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL ^^ 



PREFACE 



PREFACE 

THESE three poems, though written 
without reference to one another, 
have a slight element in common which 
may perhaps excuse their being placed 
together, in that they are all poems of 
expectancy, in the mood of faith in the 
unimagined future. They have a touch 
of prophetic conviction, and that atmos- 
phere of largeness of world-hope which 
is a trait of our time. 

They are grounded in personal feeling 
and reality, and the first of them is charged 
with specific allusions to my own experi- 
ence which may not be sufficiently self- 
explanatory. The editor who published it, 
for example, desired more light on what 
I meant by the "youth" in the Sicilian 
mine, whom he took to be a symbolical 
figure. I seldom deal in symbolisms; if 
there be hidden meanings in my verse, 
they are there without my knowledge. I 



4 PREFACE 

wrote him a letter in reply, and he quoted 
a passage from it in publishing the poem, 
in order to protect the reader from the 
pitfall which he had found. The passage 
was as follows: 

" What I actually saw is just what I say 
I saw. The incident made a deep impres- 
sion on me. I went down into a sulphur- 
mine in a remote corner of Sicily, and after 
a while I began to wonder where I was 
coming out ( I knew there was a lower 
exit) and asked. I was told that I would 
come back the same way, as only the sul- 
phur got out by the lower exit on a rail 
that was worked by a rope apparently. 
The descent had been hard, by great zig- 
zag steps cut in the rock, dark and slimy, 
and I knew the ascent would be harder 
still. So I stopped, — the engineer went 
down to the bottom on some business, and 
left me in a small cavity beside the tunnel 
( with the track ) with two or three miners 
to look after me. It was pitch-black except 



PREFACE 5 

for our candles, it was very hot, — and I 
sat, with as little on as possible, talking 
with the miners, who wanted to know of 
our American mines (Louisiana, I sup- 
pose ) and whether they could get work 
there. Then this youth came along the 
gallery with his torch and went by ; but 
having seen me he came back to get some 
soldi. He was naked, as the others were 
praclically, and the light of his torch 
showed the figure in the darkness ; he was 
eighteen or less, I should say, and his pose 
as he held out his hand was as perfect as 
you can imagine for a simple action in 
which his body, the place, all, joined, — it 
was a perfecl expression of poverty. What 
struck me, however, was the extraordi- 
nary resemblance the lines of his figure 
bore to the archaic Apollos at Athens 
(there is one at Naples), in which the 
body seems stiffened in its material as if 
the artist could not free the form from 
the stone. That living body was just the 



6 PREFACE 

same, stiffened in its lines just so ; and this 
youth so seen was as perfect a piece of 
archaic art as I ever saw. It made an in- 
delible impression on my eye, — and on 
my heart, too. If I have so suggested the 
scene to you in verse that it sets your 
mind forging its symbolisms, so much the 
better; but in the poem I had no intention 
of drawing out explicit symbolisms my- 
self. — So of the stars, though no one will 
believe it, I saw those 'forms in the gold ; ' 
and the poem is consciously visionary only 
in the * Spirit/ I never saw my other self, 
but if I should, it would be something 
like that." 

The incident of the stars, here referred 
to, is fully described in the account of 
my North African travels, which will, I 
expe6t, shortly be published serially in 
Scribner's. A third allusion to my own ex- 
perience occurs in the fourth stanza. At 
the state-prison at Nauplia, in Greece, the 
convicls fabricate an iron stamp, which 



PREFACE 7 

is used to imprint the Christian symbol 
I H S on the Easter bread. I was very much 
shocked by that. The thought toward the 
end of the poem, — " past the sensual, past 
the moral/' — contains a Nietzschean ele- 
ment, which is found elsewhere in my 
later verse. I picked up a volume by 
Nietzsche, then unknown to me, quite by 
accident in a book-store at Athens, eight 
years ago, and was so struck by it that I 
bought it. The translation was in Italian, 
"La Gaia Scienza." I afterwards bought 
and read all his works ; and little sympa- 
thetic as I am with the doctrines of the 
Super-Man by which he is most known, 
there was much in his discursive mind 
which was kindred to my own solitary 
musing and brooding in those Mediter- 
ranean years. I felt him, like the call of 
a voice in the unknown before me. I fear 
I am less one of the million " We Ameri- 
cans" than of the few" Us Europeans/' 
I was always doubly conscious, Le Voya- 



8 PREFACE 

geur et son Ombre; and my heart, at least, 
has knowledge Par dela le Bien et le Mai; 
Aurore might have served as the title of 
this little book ; and if I have not talked 
with Zarathustra, there are those in our 
small company who have. Nietzsche was 
an original and powerful genius, perhaps 
with the eccentric, proud wilfulness of 
a natural leader of men's minds. I know 
no modern thinker with such a fire-flow 
in him, the vital burst, la vie. I think of 
him as what I have found most rare in 
life, either among men or books, — a com- 
panion on my way. I dare say I should 
have found him, in real life, quite impos- 
sible ; but, safely walled apart by time and 
space and death, we are friends in the 
spirit. From him, too, as you already ob- 
serve, I took the title of the third poem. 
The second of the three poems records 
the memory of a night which I and my 
guides, having lost our way, spent in the 
desert between Biskra and Tougourt, — 



PREFACE 9 

an incident also more fully described in 
my African papers. 

This book will come, it is hoped, as a 
Christmas gift to its readers. It bears to 
all, and especially to the once young ( per- 
haps still so ) who were of old my charge 
at Columbia and elsewhere, my holiday 
greetings, fresh as in those days. May 
something of the joy and promise of the 
ancient Christmas, and of the eternal 
hopefulness of the New Year in this old 
world that is forever being re-born, be in 
its words and music as the soul of the 
book comes forth to greet the soul of its 
friends! — A toi le bonheur! 

G. E. W. 



THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 



THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 

I heard in my youth of a Kingdom, lying far at 
the whole world's end, 

And pilgrim- wise I clothed myself in my boyhood 
there to wend; 

Through the beautiful, the dutiful, the holy high- 
way ran, 

So was I told, and it stretched through the midst 
of all the glory of man ; 

And all men spoke of the Kingdom, when they 
looked on my face of joy, 

And the souls of the dead spun the golden thread 
in the heart of the silent boy. 

So I lived with beauty and duty long ; and I flour- 
ished in noble years ; 

But I came not nigh to the Kingdom thereby ; and 
my youth was thronged with fears; 

For he who seeks only the Kingdom, goes lonely, 
however it be at the prime ; 

Now, in man's estate, perplexed, desolate, I looked 
forward and back through time. 

For a curious thing had happened in the lands 

where eternally 
Blows the mighty breath of the Trades of Death 

by the old remembering sea ; 



14 THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 

Incredible was the leap and sweep of my astonished 

sense ; 
Stars in their burning unveiled to me yearning 

their spirit- throngs intense; 
And on glimmering seas Tripolitan borne, bright 

as to Jacob's eye, 
I saw, all the night, forms whose substance was 

light move in the gold on high ; 
And on earth the fire-fountains and snowy moun- 
tains that first poured the power of man, 
Blue blown spaces and sandy places where his 

racing raptures ran ; 
And whatever his soul has fashioned fairest, carved 

or painted or sung, 
On my eyes, in my ears, on my moving lips, ever 

divinely hung. 

Then was I ware in my mystic self of a discord 

shaping there, 
And a darkness filmed my outward eye and netted 

the visual air; 
Man in the strife of his sorrowing life had such 

power upon my sight ; 
In the stench and murk of Sicilian mines I lost my 

ways of light ; 
For a youth with a torch came gazing on me, with 

the nude archaic line 



THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 15 

That I loved in the marbles of Athens, and the fire 

of his soul sank in mine ; 
The woe of his eyes, the want of his limbs, the 

intimate look of his soul, — 
Who shall measure the wave of passion that from 

spirit to spirit may roll ! 
And, year after year, grew poverty dear; and thereat 

I wondered then, 
That my soul issued first unto wan lives accurst in 

the loveliest lands of men. 

Then I said to my Spirit beside me tall: "I have 

fear — this is some charm 
That the Impish Ones have wrought upon me to 

do me malignant harm, 
That for the blood-wasted and beauty-blasted I lay 

bright worship by, — 
Hover above it — sink in it — love it, — 't is some 

charm of the Evil Eye ! ' ' 
But my Spirit beside gathered height in his pride. 

Then a greater wonder arose, 
Whereat my delicate being aloof with the horror 

thereof froze ; 
For I saw in the den of a prison-pen, on a peak of 

Argos' coast, 
Men whom whips compel, mould as in hell the 

matrix of the Host; 



16 THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 

Murderers, thieves, and every brood of dark and 

heinous sin 
Forged in that shed the seal of God's Bread, that 

stamps Christ's name therein. 

Since then I have taken man's hands in mine, and 

nevermore felt shame, 
Such unearthly light upon my soul-sight in that 

flooding moment came ; 
And I mixed with all races in primitive places, 

wherever we might meet, 
In the gangway of the nations, drunken tavern, 

desert street; 
And I saw men's souls unsheltered and bare, as one 

seeth eye to eye, — 
This the wonder, this the marvel, that my nature, 

all awry, 
Trembling ever turned most truly to the lower and 

the worse. 
Then I said, abashed, to my Spirit, who flashed: 

This is some terrible curse 
That Heavenly Wrath sends on my path, that I 

lose from my soul the awe 
Of all justice human, eternal, — I, who was born 

in the law ! ' ' 



THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 17 

Then my Spirit brightened as a cloud that light- 
ened ; and I heard o'er confusions within 
The Voice that comes over chaos when a new world 

shall begin : 
' ' I have cleansed thy eyes of beauty; I have cleansed 

thy heart of duty ; 
I am soul that brightens from thee, seeing spiritual 

beauty, — 
Greatens, doing spiritual duty; incorruptible is 

spirit, — 
Nought to thee the vesture meaneth , gleam or gloom 

that men inherit; 
Thou art waking in the Kingdom, where through 

shadows half-divined 
The dark planet moves up slowly to the glory of 

the mind; 
Past the sensual, past the moral, now thy being 

newly rolls, — 
Thou art living, thou art breathing, in the Kingdom 

of All-Souls ! " 

I lay in the darkness hushed and o'erawed, as the 

sense of the words sank in, — 
One human spirit that all men inherit, undeprived 

by their woe or their sin; 
No curst servile races, no virtue-throned places! — 

and splendors o'er me ran, — 



18 THE KINGDOM OF ALL-SOULS 

Above me immense, gathering light intense, with 

the beautiful form of man, 
The Spirit stood bright in angelical might, and his 

countenance beamed afar, 
Born with our birth for dominion o'er earth, Master 

and Lord of our Star ; 
Heaven shook with the rays from his arrowy hand, 

and the stars in the zenith grew wan, — 
I saw, I know, in that mighty glow the foregleam 

of some dawn ; 
And as a gold pillar of sunrise that flamed, and a 

mounting glory showered, 
Majestical over my dark form that soul of morning 

towered. 



WHAT THE STARS SANG IN THE DESERT 



WHAT THE STARS SANG 
IN THE DESERT 

I woke in the desert rude 

O'erhung by the star-sweet sky, 
And ever the radiant multitude 
In the silence drew more nigh, 
As if on my eyes to brood, 
And inward glory nurse, 
And out of the heart of the universe 
Soared forth my singing cry : 

'We are young — our song up-springing 

The crystal blue along, 
Creation's morning singing, — 
It was but children-song, 
Melodiously ringing, 
Mysteriously forewarning 
The realm beyond the morning 
We infinitely throng. 

' We sit in our burning spheres 

inimitably hung ; 
By the speed of light we measure the years 
On purple ether flung ; 

Without a shadow time appears, 
A calendar of echoing lights 



22 WHAT THE STARS SANG 

That flame and dusk from depths and heights, 
And all our years are young. 

We are borne through darkness streaming 

Wherein our glory glides ; 
We dower the deep with the beaming 
Where prophecy resides ; 

Forevermore we are dreaming, 
Still in the springtime blossom 
Of thoughts that light our bosom 
And beat our glowing sides. 

Wide the abyss ; we span it, 

Who showering a bright spark came ; 
And forever we smite it and fan it 
Forth from the forging flame, — 
Life, flower of the planet, 
Flower of the fire, supernal, 
Burning, blooming eternal, — 
A million names are his name. 

"We tremble; we thrill heaven's ocean 
With the myriad-glittering quest; 
Aspiration and devotion 

From the prime were our brooding nest ; 
And youth, — 'tis breathed emotion, 
A seeing and a hearkening, 



WHAT THE STARS SANG 23 

A gleaming and a darkening, 
And a whispering to the breast. 

' Then with bright hands uplifted 
We strike the thousand lyres ; 
The music, on dreams drifted, 
Pours all the world's desires; 
And ever the song is sifted 
From the heart of youth forecasting 
The unknown everlasting 
That bathes us and inspires. 

: We gaze on the far flood flowing 

Unimaginably free, 
Multitudinous, mystical, glowing, 
But all we do not see ; 

And a rapture is all our knowing, 
That on fiery nerves comes stealing, 
An intimate revealing 
That all is yet to be. 

' When sheathed and glacial o'er us 

Arcturus courses cold, 
And dry and dark before us 
Aldebaran is rolled, 

Far-clustering orbs in chorus 
Shall light the pealing sky, 



24 WHAT THE STARS SANG 

And throne to throne reply, 
'The heavens grow not old.' " 

Round the desert wild and eerie 

The starry echoes clung ; 
In a region weird and dreary 
The golden song was sung ; 
Over lands forlorn and weary, 
Where the drifting white sand only 
Drifts anew the sand- wreath lonely, 
The radiant silence hung. 



BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 



BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 

I rode in the dark of the spirit 

A marvellous, marvellous way ; 
The faiths that the races inherit 

Behind in the sunset lay ; 
Dome, mosque, and temple huddled 

Bade farewell to the day ; 
But I rode into the leagues of the dark, 
There was no light but my hoof-beats' spark 

That sprang from that marvellous way. 

Behind were the coffined gods in their shroud 

Of jungle, desert, and mound, 
The mighty man-bones and the mummies proud 

Stark in their caves underground ; 
And the planet that sepulchres god and man, 

Bore me in the cone of its dark profound 
To the ultimate clash in stellar space, 
The way of the dead, god-making race 

Whirled with its dead gods round. 

And my heart, as the night grew colder, 
Drew near to the heart of my steed ; 

I had pillowed my head on his shoulder 
Long years in the sand and the reed ; 



28 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 

Long ago he was foaled of the Muses, 

And sired of the heroes' deed; 
And he came unto me by the fountain 
Of the old Hellenic mountain, 

And of heaven is his breed. 

So my heart grew near to the heart of my horse, 

Who was wiser, far wiser than I; 
Yet wherever I leaned in my spirit's course, 

He swayed, and questioned not why; 
And this was because he was born above, 

A child of the beautiful sky; 
And now we were come to the kingdoms black, 
And nevermore should we journey back 

To the land where dead men lie. 

Now whether or not in that grewsome air 

My soul was seized by the dread cafard, 
Terror of deserts, I cannot swear; 

But I rode straight into an orbed star, 
Where only reigned the spirit of good, 

And only the holy and virtuous are; 
And my horse's eyes sent forth sun-rays, 
And in my own was a noon-tide gaze 

That mastered that splendid star. 



BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 29 

The madness of deserts, if so it be, 

Burned in my brain, and I saw 
The multitudinous progeny 

Of the talon and the claw ; 
And Mammon in all their palaces 

Gaped with a golden maw; 
And we rode far off from the glittering roofs, 
And the horse, as he passed, with his heaven-shod 
hoofs 

Broke the tables of their law. 

And we came to a city adjacent thereby, 

For the twain to one Empire belong; 
Black over it hung a terrible cry 

From eternal years of wrong ; 
And the land, it was full of gallows and prisons 

And the horrible deeds of the strong ; 
And we fled; but the flash of my horse's feet 
Broke open the jails in every street, 

And lightning burned there long. 

We were past the good and the evil, 

In the spirit's uttermost dark; 
He is neither god nor devil 

For whom my heart-beats hark ; 
And I leaned my cheek to my horse's neck, 

And I sang to his ear in the dark: 



SO BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 

'There is neither good nor evil, 
There is neither god nor devil, 

And our way lies on through the dark. 

' ' Once I saw by a throne 

A burning angel who cried, — 
' I will suffer all woes that man's spirit has known, ' 

And he plunged in the turbid tide ; 
And wherever he sank with that heart of love, 

He rose up purified ; 
Glowed brighter his limbs and his beautiful face, 
And he went not back to the heavenly place, 
And he drew all men to his side. 

' ' I have never heard it or learnt it, 

It is in me like my soul, 
And the sights of this world have burnt it 

In me to a living coal, — 
The soul of man is a masterless thing 

And bides not another's control ; 
And gypsy-broods of bandit-loins 
Shall teach what the lawless life enjoins 

Upon the lawless soul. 

"When we dare neither to loose nor to bind, 
However to us things appear; 



BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 31 

When whatsoever in others we find, 
We shall feel neither shame nor fear; 

When we learn that to love the lowliest 
We must first salute him our peer ; 

When the basest is most our brother, 

And we neither look down on nor up to another, — 
The end of our ride shall be near." 

A wind arose from the dreadful past, 

And the sand smoked on the knoll; 
I saw, blown by the bolts of the blast, 

The shreds of the Judgment scroll ; 
I heard the death-spasms of Justice old 

Under the seas and the mountains roll; 
Then the horse who had borne me through all 

disaster, 
Turned blazing eyes upon me his master, 

For the thoughts I sing are his soul. 

And I sang in his ear, — ' ' 'T is the old world dying 
Whose death-cries through heaven are rolled ; 

Through the souls of men a flame is flying 
That shall a new firmament mould ; 

And the uncreated light in man's spirit 
Shall sun, moon, and stars unfold;" 



32 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 

Then the horse snuffed the dark with his nostrils 

bright, 
And he strode, and he stretched, and he neighed 

to the light 
That shall beam at the word to be told. 



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